Famous Recruits Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Recruits poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous recruits poems. These examples illustrate what a famous recruits poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...s cooper’d an’ ca’d a wrang pin in’t.
Davie Bluster! Davie Bluster, for a saint ye do muster,
The core is no nice o’ recruits;
Yet to worth let’s be just, royal blood ye might boast,
If the Ass were the king o’ the brutes,
Davie Bluster! 12 If the Ass were the king o’ the brutes.
Cessnock-side! Cessnock-side, wi’ your turkey-cock pride
Of manhood but sma’ is your share:
Ye’ve the figure, ’tis true, ev’n your foes will allow,
And your friends they dare grant you nae ma...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...rongest Byass rules,
Is Pride, the never-failing Vice of Fools.
Whatever Nature has in Worth deny'd,
She gives in large Recruits of needful Pride;
For as in Bodies, thus in Souls, we find
What wants in Blood and Spirits, swell'd with Wind;
Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our Defence,
And fills up all the mighty Void of Sense!
If once right Reason drives that Cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless Day;
Trust not your self; but your Defects to know,
Make use of ev...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...to our eyes.
But on one thing you could gamble, in the thickest of the fray,
Though they called us volunteers and raw recruits,
You could track us past the shell holes, and the tracks were all one way
Of the good Australian ammunition boots.
The Highlanders were next of kin, the Irish were a treat,
The Yankees knew it all and had to learn,
The Frenchmen kept it going, both in vict'ry and defeat,
Fighting grimly till the tide was on the turn.
And our army kept beside...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...you, and presently I must have them serve me.
Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means;
On the plain below, recruits are drilling and exercising;
There is the camp—one regiment departs to-morrow;
Do you hear the officers giving the orders?
Do you hear the clank of the muskets?
Why, what comes over you now, old man?
Why do you tremble, and clutch my hand so convulsively?
The troops are but drilling—they are yet surrounded with smiles;
Around them, at hand, t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Danny Deever, you can 'ear the quickstep play,
The regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away;
Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an' they'll want their beer to-day,
After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'....Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...rs in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how...Read more of this...
by
Owen, Wilfred
...ng the store—the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;
Squads gather everywhere by common consent, and arm;
The new recruits, even boys—the old men show them how to wear their
accoutrements—they
buckle the straps carefully;
Outdoors arming—indoors arming—the flash of the musket-barrels;
The white tents cluster in camps—the arm’d sentries around—the sunrise
cannon,
and
again at sunset;
Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the whar...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
joins his enemies' recruits.
The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
an insight like the flight of birds:
Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...more. And then I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead,
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again....Read more of this...
by
Scannell, Vernon
...ore you came to camp, came many a welcome gift;
Praises and presents came, and nourishing food—till at last, among the recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but look’d on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world, you gave me. 5...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...and street
Wherever I go my drum I beat,
And wherever I go in my coat of red
The ribbons flutter about my head.
I seek recruits for wars to come -
For slaughterless wars I beat the drum,
And the shilling I give to each new ally
Is hope to live and courage to die.
I know that new recruits shall come
Wherever I beat the sounding drum,
Till the roar of the march by country and town
Shall shake the tottering Dagons down.
For I was objectless as they
And loitering idly day by d...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...st Counties rallied round Stephen,
Where his cause had support of the masses,
And his promise of loot brought a lot of recruits
From the more intellectual classes.
The Country were split in two parties
In a manner you'd hardly believe,
The West with a will shouted: "Up with Matilda !"
The East hollered: Come along, Steve!
The two armies met up in Yorkshire,
Both leaders the same tactics tried.
To each soldier they gave a big standard to wave,
In hopes they'd impress t ...Read more of this...
by
Edgar, Marriott
...han, the lungs will go to cancer."
II
I speak, "the enemy's exhausted, victory
Is almost ours..." These twenty new recruits,
Conscripted for the battles lost already,
Were once the young, exchanging bitter winks,
And shuffling when I rose to eloquence,
Determined not to die and not to show
The fear that held them in their careless stance,
And yet they died, how many wars ago?
Or came back cream puffs, 45, and fat.
I know that I am touched for my eyes brim
With...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...people,
The gates along her wall,
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.
All enemy divisions,
Recruits of every class,
And highly-screened positions
For flame or poison-gas;
The craft that we call modern,
The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed
In sixteen Eighty-two.
Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
Who crack ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...d us, hacked off
all the inoculated arms. There they were
in a pile, a pile of little arms.
*
Soon after, all us new recruits turned on
to angel-dust like the rest.
You get it subsidized out there.
The snail can' t crawl on the straight
razor and live. I'm innocent.
(This poem was Commended in the 1992 National Poetry Competition)...Read more of this...
by
Padel, Ruth
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